There have been major changes in the landscape of information and communication technology in educational research and practice since the publication of the first edition of the International Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education (Voogt & Knezek, 2008) launched at the ECER in Göteborg 2008. For example, the proliferation of mobile devices and applications have already had major implications on how the nature of teaching and learning should be conceptualized, and what pedagogical practices should be used to support bridging formal and informal learning. The advent of social media also highlights the importance of gaining a deeper understanding of social learning theories and computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) theories and practices. The advancement of new technologies to support easy accessibility of educational resources such as OER (Open Education Resources) and to a lesser extent MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have led to the debate on how assessment should be conducted and how technologies could be used to support it. The demand of the knowledge society requires that researchers, policy makers, and educational practitioners be conversant with new research findings in order to understand the impact of information technology in teaching and learning, and how to support learners to use new technologies and applications creatively and effectively. New research paradigms have emerged to meet these challenges.

With all these new developments, naturally new themes and findings of research have emerged and reported, and some topics and chapters in the Handbook have now lost their currencies. As such, we have updated the first edition of the Handbook, and now publishing a second edition (Voogt, Knezek, Christensen & Lai, 2018), to be launched at ECER As we know, there is a wealth of research on information technology in primary and secondary education. Yet most of it is scattered and a synthesis of the research from a broad international perspective is needed. In the second edition of the Handbook we have continued our efforts to synthesize research and practice and project future directions in the field. The Handbook has two major focuses. First, it presents current research on the design and impact of technology-supported learning environments and its effects on the student learner. Second, as a major theme, it reports up-to-date research on the implementation of IT in educational practice. Barriers and opportunities for the implementation of information technology are studied from several perspectives: the curriculum, the teacher, the school organization, assessment and educational policy.

In this double symposium we will first present an overview of the second edition of the Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education, followed a review of the major research findings of six of the twelve sections of the Handbook. In the first part of the symposium we focus on: (1) curricular challenges of the 21^st century; (2) advances of technology-enhanced leaning environments for learners; and (3) the learning process and international educational policies about information technology in education. In the second part of the symposium we will present a synthesis of research on: (4) the attitudes, competencies, and dispositions for teaching and learning with information technology; (5) professional learning and development for integration of IT in education; and (6) we conclude with research about the use of information technology in assessment as, for and of 21st-century learning. 

Voogt, J. & Knezek, G. (Eds.) (2008). International Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education. New York: Springer. Voogt, J., Knezek, G., Christensen, R. & Lai, K.-W. (Eds.) (2018). The Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.